Monday, June 30, 2014

Digital Native-- Boyd, Prensky, Wesch

     Dana Boyd points out very interesting ideas about technology and our youth: just because our students are born in a digital world where they're digital natives, it doesn't mean that they know how to critically examine it. It's not even about our youth not knowing how to use the technology. Because of their curiosity, they would be able to figure it out by trial and error. The fact that our students aren't able to evaluate the information they receive individually is the bigger problem. She explains how teachers tend to de-value Wikipedia as an unreliable source of information and Google as a good source of information but we never teach our students to question both sources of information and why one is considered a good one or a bad one.  Teachers should be teaching our students to question both website's source of accuracy and credibility. She mentioned how we, as teachers, can take a website like Wikipedia and teach our "youth to interrogate sources of information and understand how information is produced".
     I never thought of it that way. I'm one of those teachers who tells her students to not use Wikipedia because anyone can edit the website and we aren't sure if those sources are credible. I agree with Boyd. I can see how important it is to teach our students, the "digital natives", to question the information they receive in the digital world. Critical thinking should be a taught skill in any classes and in everyday life, not just when students interact with digital- and non digital- information.
     Thinking about Mark Prensky, he raises such an important point. Kids are so involved with technology and if we are not teaching them in a unconventional way, we are not engaging them. It's important that we facilitate the use of technology in our classrooms if we want to engage our students.
     In addition, I  agree with Michael Wesch's message. The digital world has changed and we cannot ignore it. In addition to linking information, the web also links people. As we step into the digital world, we need to rethink about ourselves and how we define our ideas about certain things. One that got my attention was he stated we needed to rethink our idea of friends. I keep thinking about our social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Personally, I never thought I would still be connected with my friends from Sao Miguel. As a dancer, I have expanded my network of other dancers and get to know them in both the virtual and in the real world. I know of what my friends are doing and I know of what events are happening around the area and in the community. This is a fascinating shift.
   Digital natives still have a lot to learn about how to use technology and how to critically examine the information we encounter in the digital world. I am a digital immigrant, I know. Sometimes I feel that I'm not and that I know more about technology and how to examine its sources than my students, the digital natives.

1 comment:

  1. I think you were able to pull out the important contributions of each of these authors, without dismissing any of their claims, or collapsing them into one another. Reading these blogs is helping me to see them in new ways, as well.

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